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Backend Engineer - Akita Agent

Akita (View all Jobs)

Remote-first

Please mention No Whiteboard if you apply!
I'm a one-man team looking to improve tech interviews, and could use any support! 😄

Interview Process

1. Bug bash 2. An open-ended exercise that involves brainstorming, building a prototype, and team Q&A 3. System design and behavioral components

Programming Languages Mentioned

Swift, Golang

At Akita, we're making observability accessible to "99% developers."

A big part of the "one-click" observability dream is making installation and configuration as easy as possible. Our eBPF-based passive traffic monitoring solution is an important part of this. We're looking for backend engineers excited about working on our traffic collection agent towards empowering developers to understand their systems.

What is Akita?
Today, understanding system behavior is hard. Developers have to instrument their systems; they have to understand logs, metrics, and traces. At Akita, we're building a new kind of observability solution that does not require an internal expert to install and operate. Our solution has two main parts: an eBPF-based approach for automatically watching API traffic and automatic inference over the API traffic

Akita was founded by Jean Yang, previously a CMU professor with over ten years of experience in programming systems research and over two years of experience with Taylor Swift memes on Twitter. Akita is backed by two of the top VC firms, as well as a major NBA player and some other incredible angel investors. 🏀😇

Who works at Akita?
We're remote-first, work together closely, and get the most excited when we build something that helps our users. We believe in shipping quickly and often, learning, and iterating. We love dogs and also cats. You can learn more about our team here.

About you
  • You're a builder. You love building software systems and have 2+ years of experience doing low-level or network-level programming.
  • You're comfortable sharing drafts, getting feedback, and iterating. You have experience working closely with others and changing course based on feedback. You find this way of working fun.
  • You’re scrappy. You know what it takes to ship high-quality production software, but you’re also happy taking judicious shortcuts and even deliberately incurring tech debt to get the job done. You're looking for a fast-moving team that fits the way you work.
  • You’re versatile. You've gone deep, but you're flexible across your toolbox and are willing to do what it takes to solve a hard problem.
    • What you'll do at Akita
  • Build integrations for capturing API traffic: packet capture, Envoy, Istio, Consul, API gateways.
  • Build middleware for application frameworks.
  • Build client configuration and usability features: remote configuration, telemetry, daemon mode, configuration.
  • Optimize CPU and memory usage of packet capture.
  • Extend client to communicate with infrastructure APIs (K8s, etc.) to provide additional context.
  • Help develop and implement a plan for greater eBPF usage.
  • Help users understand agent deployment in different environments: K8s, PaaS, IaaS, etc.
    • You're a good fit if you have
  • 2+ years backend engineering experience.
  • Good low-level programming fundamentals.
  • Strong attention to detail.
  • Ability to collaborate remotely under ambiguity.
  • Ability to prioritize work in a dynamic environment.
    • You'll have an edge if you have
  • Familiarity with network protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, gRPC, TLS, DNS, etc.).
  • Experience with eBPF or packet capture.
  • Experience with service mesh, application gateways, VPNs, or other networking services.
  • Experience optimizing memory and CPU usage.
  • Familiarity with real-time data collection.
  • Familiarity with IaaS and PaaS, particularly infrastructure APIs: Kubernetes, ECS, VSphere, Heroku.
  • Experience writing API middleware or proxies.
  • Comfort working with abstract syntax trees and doing similar data transformations.
    • Not necessary for this role
  • College degree
  • Database experience
  • Experience designing/architecting systems from scratch
  • Tech lead experience
  • Past experience working at a startup
  • Experience with Go, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, or Terraform
    • Tech stack
  • Go
  • Docker; Kubernetes
  • AWS; Terraform
    • Benefits
  • Competitive salary and equity packages.
  • Generous health and dental insurance. 401(k) plan.
  • Work from anywhere in the US, as long as there is a significant overlap with 9am-6pm Pacific time.
    • If you're excited to build build the future of observability with a small, capable team, we'd love to hear from you.

    Akita is an equal-opportunity employer.

    Please mention No Whiteboard if you apply!
    I'm a one-man team looking to improve tech interviews, and could use any support! 😄

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